Sunday, October 01, 2006

Galaxy Express!

Recently there was an article in SpaceDaily about a new Japanese rocket called the GX, with a kerosene fueled first stage and methane second stage. It is being developed by an industry consortium. I now have a fairly detailed article which a colleague obtained from a Korean website about the GX (or Galaxy Express). I understand the article was translated into Korean from Japanese. The article contains some nice pictures and diagrams but unfortunately I can't publish them until I'm sure there are no copyright issues.
My Korean is not that good, so it would have taken me all day to read it. Fortunately my colleague gave me two key points about the article:
-The rocket first stage will be an RD-180 (not, as the Space Daily website stated, a US engine unless they meant an Atlas V first stage.)
-The current design doesn't include a turbopump for the second stage methane engine(!).

There was also some hint of problems with the methane engine development. We could probably help them there:)

Since we have Korean thanksgiving (Chuseok) this week combined with another holiday to make a weeklong break, I might just have time to RTA. I'll also try to find out if it's possible to view the article online. The website seems to require login access.

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